Haarstick Sailmakers: End of an Era

29 April 2015

by Steve Haarstick It’s been almost fifty-one years since I begged for a part time job at Hard Sails in the summer of 1964. Although I was hired to design and build a portable sail testing rig, I realized what Hard Sails really needed was someone to develop an alternative to their current “eye-ball”, “that’s the way they like them” approach to sail design and construction. Being an engineer, I figured how hard could this be? I couldn’t wait to quickly solve this project part time while I started graduate school that fall.

What was supposed to be a brief project became my life’s work! After my move to Ithaca in 1968, I got my fledgling design programme…